


city nights and empty rooftops

by socknonny



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 12 Days of Christmas, Emotions, Gift Giving, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28299516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/socknonny/pseuds/socknonny
Summary: Steve climbed the final rungs of the rusty fire escape onto the roof of the hospital and found Billy Hargrove.Including twelve days of gift-giving, some perfectly shitty gifts, and a lot of healing.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 7
Kudos: 60
Collections: Harringrove Holiday Exchange 2020





	city nights and empty rooftops

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peterqpan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterqpan/gifts).



> Happy holidays, dear giftee! I’m so sorry this couldn’t be art for you (it was a pinch hit, and I did try to draw something… but I’m not an artist ^^; believe me you don’t want what I tried to make haha), but I’ve tried to give you what you enjoy in art in fic form. Nonsexual intimacy, foreheads resting together, lots of feelings in a slow build, and an equal relationship. I hope you enjoy! <3

On the first day of Christmas, some asshole gave to Steve…

Well, he gave him some asshole. If said asshole’s presence could be considered a gift at all.

Steve climbed the final rungs of the rusty fire escape onto the roof of the hospital and found Billy Hargrove. A beam of light from the full moon above illuminated Billy, leaning there in the center of the roof, facing towards the silver-limned view of Hawkins before them. Smoke wafted above him in tiny, drifting fingers.

Steve paused, feet still on the uppermost rung, debating whether he should just turn around and go. Then Billy said, “You breathe too loud, Harrington,” and so he’d climbed the rest of the way.

As if he could ever have left.

“How’d you know it was me?” he asked as he came alongside Billy, wordlessly accepting the cigarette passed his way and taking a drag.

Billy wasn’t meant to smoke anymore. But as he’d said to Steve two nights ago—this time on ground level near the hospital doors—if anyone deserved a fucking cigarette, it was him. His best compromise was sharing them with Steve, so that was something.

“Because you’re a fucking mouthbreather,” Billy said waspishly, but when he took the cigarette back from Steve’s fingers, his own were gentle. Lingering. And Steve’s sinuses were perfectly clear, thank you very much, so Billy was full of shit.

Steve knew he was full of shit. Knew he lashed out even worse than he ever had, and given everything that had happened… Steve felt he could let a stupid insult or two slide.

“What are you doing out here?” Steve asked.

"Getting some fresh air." Billy took a long drag of the cigarette and ground it under his foot, coughing. "What're you out here for?"

_ Looking for you. _

"Visiting Dustin." It wasn’t a lie. Poor kid needed extra tests after… after everything.

Billy's eyebrows shot up and he made a show of looking around the empty roof.

"He's asleep now, dickhead," Steve said with a laugh, staring out at the night ahead of them. "I came up here because…" He paused, unable to confess the true reason, and also aware that it isn't the  _ only _ reason. Not exactly.

Could he confess the other?

Or would Billy laugh at him?

He remembered he didn't care and tilted his head to the side, hands shoved in his pockets as he admitted, "Didn't want to go home. It's lonely in my house."

When he looked up, Billy was watching him, expression inscrutable. Steve turned away, but for some reason the silence was pleasant. Comforting. Steve hated silence, but this felt different, and for the first time in months something unnamed eased a little inside him.

Still, he couldn’t stand it very long, and so he began to hum under his breath, not even sure what he was singing. Billy gave him a funny look, but he ignored it.

"Hey Harrington."

Steve looked up just as Billy tossed him something, catching it on reflex. It was the cigarette box, one still left inside. By the time he’d frowned, processed it, and looked up for an explanation, Billy was already halfway to the edge of the roof. He lifted a careless hand in the air behind him, waving goodbye, but paused just before he reached the ladder.

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” he said, and then he left.

Dustin was getting discharged in the morning. Steve frowned, staring down at the cigarette, thinking about how silence for once hadn’t felt so heavy.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he muttered before lighting up and turning back to the view.

The second day of Christmas, Steve found himself jittering with nerves for no other reason than the fact he no longer had an excuse to hide behind. The moon was high above them, stars filling the sky, and Dustin was far away—asleep in his own bed at home.

Steve parked the car and stared at the hospital roof. The silence began to eat at him, tearing into his mind until he tore the car door open and raced towards the fire escape.

This time, the roof was buffeted with wind, the trees around the building shuddering. At least it wasn’t snowing—a thought that tripled in intensity when he reached the top and found Billy huddled in nothing but a leather jacket and a hospital gown.

Steve opened his mouth to say something but didn’t know what, and so he found himself sitting beside Billy with nothing more than a nod and a glance. The silence from his car slowly receded and a different one took its place.

“Here,” Billy said after a minute, digging around in his pocket. “Found this in the back of the drawer by my bed.”

Steve took the standard issue pencil and studied it. It was the same as any other pencil he’d seen, complete with chewed eraser and broken lead, but it had worn down over the years. Someone had wrapped the whole thing in a clumpy, almost unrecognizable Tears for Fears sticker, and he wondered if Billy knew he liked them. 

He smiled. As far as gifts went, it was fucking terrible. But it came with the brush of skin against skin, and a wry smile that hinted of tongues running over teeth. Hints of an arrogance and self-assurance Steve had thought was lost, but may only have been dormant.

“May as well leave a mark, hey?” Steve said, leaning forward to scribble their names on the yellow lip of the roof. “Think we’ve earned it.”

The wry smile broke into a grin, and this time when Billy said goodbye, Steve was already promising to see him tomorrow.

By the third day of Christmas, Steve realized Billy was bringing him gifts. And even though they were shitty… they weren’t shit. Each tacky, worn item had been carefully cultivated to make Steve smile. Like Billy could somehow see into his soul and know that the key to his heart was a metal keychain he’d found in the parking lot.

Maybe he could. Maybe Steve really was that easy to read, because the truth of it was that loneliness could be destroyed by a very particular kind of gift. One that said: I saw this and thought of you.

And gifts like that could be anything.

Steve began to count.

A comic torn out of the back of a newspaper.

A polaroid of the ugliest hospital Christmas tree Steve had ever seen, accompanied by Billy’s refusal to tell him where he got a camera.

Candy. 

Candy.

More candy.

On the eighth day of Christmas, they kissed.

Steve jolted, wondering through the racing of his heart how he’d managed to screw this up. Then he realized Billy was kissing  _ him _ , and so he relaxed, threaded his fingers through Billy’s curls, and deepened the kiss. Light drifts of snow fell around them on the roof, and the moon was only half full, leaving them almost in shadow.

The shadows didn’t feel dangerous anymore, and the silence wrapped around him like a blanket. Billy hadn’t said it out loud, but Steve had a feeling there was something waiting at home for him that he didn’t want either. Perhaps not loneliness—perhaps the absence of it. They rested there, cocooned in the feeling, foreheads pressed together, and another layer of something Steve hadn’t known was there simply fell away.

Nights after that were gentler, somehow. Skin brushing skin as they stared out at the rooftops before them, counting down the days until Billy was discharged. Only a couple more. Then they could both go home.

Steve swallowed thickly, and when he climbed the ladder on Christmas Eve he brought two beers carefully balanced in the pockets of his jacket. Not enough to make them drunk, just enough to make them feel like two teenagers sneaking out on a rooftop instead of two young adults on the brink of the unknown.

“Hey, you know that ridiculous Christmas song?” Steve asked, laughing softly. “On the first day of Christmas, da da da da da da—you know?”

Billy’s brow furrowed, incredulous and amused. “You gonna serenade me, Harrington?”

Steve shrugged, grinning. The alcohol was making him bold, but the truth of it was that he wanted it to. “Maybe. Was just going to say… it’s meant to be  _ my true love sent to me _ , right? What if it’s the other way around?” 

Silvery laughter floated between them, lifting up into the moonlight. “You going around giving your true love out as a gift to people?” Billy asked, waggling his eyebrows. “Dick move.”

But Billy’s eyes met his and they shone with something Steve recognized. He’d seen it enough in his own mirror, as he’d practiced how he might say this. 

_ You’re the gift, Billy. _

_ You’re what I want for Christmas. _

_ On the twelfth day of Christmas, someone gave to me… my true love waiting for me. _

Steve couldn’t claim to be a poet, and the idea of a  _ true love  _ was so sappy even he didn’t completely buy it, but he couldn’t get the thought out of his mind all the same. Because who cared about gifts when you had someone beside you? Money meant nothing. There was only one gift Steve wanted.

He cleared his throat, swallowing the words that waited on the tip of his tongue; so, maybe the alcohol couldn’t make him quite that bold. But he also had the strangest feeling he didn’t have to say the words out loud anymore, either. Like maybe they were hovering between them, surrounding them, and that was enough.

“How did you really know it was me?” Steve asked. “That first night.”

Billy side-eyed him, jaw tense and eyes fierce. But then, he softened, as he had again and again over these last few nights, but only for Steve. “I didn’t,” he confessed, turning his gaze back to the destruction, to the moss and grass growing from the cracks. “I just hoped it was.”

Steve swallowed, his throat feeling strangely thick with emotion, but before he could speak, Billy began humming under his breath, and Steve realized suddenly that he’d been humming the same thing that first night. Like he’d prophesied this from the beginning. Or like some Christmas miracle had made it happen. 

Something thudded into his chest and he looked down to see a plastic cup fall into his lap. He picked it up, laughing as he read the label and recognized one of the shitty hospital puddings Dustin loved and everyone else hated.

“Merry Christmas, Billy,” he said, bumping their shoulders together as he peeled back the lid on the pudding.

He didn’t get a chance to taste it. Billy’s mouth pressed against his, and the plastic cup fell, forgotten, onto the roof. 

Between one kiss and the next, Steve worked out a way to solve both their problems, and when he asked Billy to come home with him, Billy said yes.


End file.
